


shatter in gold

by orphan_account



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Body Worship, Fluff, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Canon, Rimming, Scars, Top!Ashe, bottom!dedue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 15:24:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23209987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Ashe,” Dedue says to him one night, “do you think my face is scary?”Ten years after the war, Ashe realizes that Dedue doesn't think he's beautiful.
Relationships: Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert/Dedue Molinaro
Comments: 26
Kudos: 245





	shatter in gold

“Ashe,” Dedue says to him one night, “do you think my face is scary?”

It is a quiet autumn evening in Fhirdiad. They are lying awake in bed, quietly enjoying each other’s company after another long day of running the inn. Ashe is sitting with a copy of the third book of the Loog cycle in his lap; its corners are blunted and soft, pages stuffed with colorful bookmarks from friends across the continent.

Dedue has been knitting a scarf for him. He is not looking at Ashe. He is picking thoughtfully over the same row of stitches for the third time tonight.

“What? Of course not,” Ashe says, laying the book down flat in his lap. He squints at his husband over the tops of his reading glasses. Strictly speaking, he doesn’t need them—his eyes aren’t gone just yet—but, at Dedue's insistence, he’s been wearing them a lot more often lately. “Did someone say something to you while I was gone?”

“No.” The answer comes too quickly.

Ashe pauses for a second. He sets his book aside, then rests a hand on top of Dedue’s, forcing him to stop plucking stitches from the raw end of the scarf.

“Talk to me,” he says.

Dedue shakes his head.

“I do not want to trouble you,” he says plainly.

Ashe frowns. Dedue seems to have expected this, because he only laughs and presses a kiss to Ashe’s furrowed brow in response. “Truly, love. It is not worth the worry,” he adds.

Predictably, this does nothing to quell Ashe’s deepening scowl. He lays his head on Dedue’s shoulder, just below the cut of his sleeveless top, bare skin warm against his cheek. In the lamplight, the deep blue of the scarf in his hands seems almost black, all finer details of the stitchwork swallowed up like distant stars in the night sky.

“If it bothers you enough to have to ask me,” Ashe insists, “then it bothers me enough to want to know.”

Dedue begins to protest, but Ashe butts his head a little further into his bicep, and he acquiesces with little more than a small sigh.

“A few days ago,” he says, “I went up to the palace, at Dimitri’s request. On my way back into town, a small child stopped me. She wanted to know what happened to my face.”

“Huh,” Ashe says, noncommittal, slipping his hand underneath Dedue’s to rub at the side of his finger with the pad of his thumb. “What did you tell her?”

“The truth,” Dedue replies. “I told her that I used to be a soldier in a war that ended before she was born. I was hurt protecting the king.”

“And how did she take that?”

“...well,” Dedue admits. “She thought it was—cool. I thought she might. Faerghus at peace still holds blood in its soil. Dimitri cannot change the roots of a whole culture in only ten years’ time—and even then, I am not sure that he would want to.”

Ashe nods and says nothing. They’ve talked about this before; it bears no repeating.

“Does it bother you that she asked?” he says instead.

Dedue hesitates. “A little,” he says. Ashe squeezes his hand. “She could not have meant anything by it, I know. She was a child. But I have been thinking about it more than I should.”

Ashe threads his fingers through Dedue’s. In the low light, the matching bronze of their wedding bands gleams. “Tell me about it,” he suggests.

Dedue is quiet for a moment. He has that distantly focused look in his eyes, the one that means that he is somewhere far away, gathering all of his scattered thoughts into a single neat file. Ashe waits patiently for him to return with them.

“War leaves its scars on everything it touches,” he finally says. “From Duscur, to Faerghus, to all of Fodlan. You know this better than anyone—you were there, after all.”

“I was,” Ashe agrees, turning his head to press a small kiss to Dedue’s arm.

“I have been thinking,” he continues. Dedue turns his free hand over in his lap, crossed and nicked with countless old wounds, as familiar to Ashe as the back of his own. “About this body. About everything that I, and the world, have put it through. It is not regret, exactly—”

Dedue pulls in a breath. Ashe hums softly, a reminder, an anchor.

“I do not need to be beautiful,” Dedue says slowly. “I am yours, and that is enough. But I do wonder, sometimes, about all of these scars—about a world where I did not have to bear them.” 

Ashe mulls over this for a minute. The silence stretches comfortably between them, a well-worn and thoughtful quiet. It is one of the things that Ashe loves the most about Dedue: the space that he holds, the way he allows good things to flourish from the earth and open air around him.

Ashe understands, obviously. He has his own fair share of scars from the war, and even more from before that, memories of a life on the street made flesh. Nicks and scrapes that held infection a lifetime ago and never quite healed over. Letters seared into the flesh of his upper arm, a permanent and painfully literal reminder of the lowest places he’s ever been.

“They tell a story,” Ashe decides out loud. “They tell _ your _ story. So I like them, I think.”

He taps at Dedue’s chest, a little below his right collarbone. Below the fabric sits a jagged, ugly Thoron scar from their final march on Enbarr. “It’s kind of nice, remembering everything that’s tried to kill us. It’s kind of nice to think about the fact that we’re still here.”

Dedue is looking at him now, seafoam eyes fond, closer to amber in the lamplight.

“That answer suits you,” he says.

Ashe has long since learned that he is too pale to ever hide his own blush, so he lets Dedue smile at it without protest. Instead, he pulls the knitting gently out of his hands, setting both yarn and needles on the side table. He swings his leg over both of Dedue’s, seating himself firmly in his lap.

Dedue doesn’t question it. He never does. His hands come up to bracket his hips, warm and steady.

“For the record,” Ashe says, “no. I don’t think you’re scary. I think you’re the most beautiful person in the whole world.”

Kissing Dedue is comfortable, now. Ashe still vividly remembers when it was not. In the early days, right after the war, when they were young and dumb and everything was new and uncertain, even the lightest brush of lips against his had been enough to send his heart hammering against every individual rib in its cage.

These days, with their twenties fully behind them and their thirties settling like leaves in the hollows of their bones, kissing is easy. Kissing feels like coming home. Ashe is nothing if not a dedicated study, and he’s learned all the tricks, more or less—the way to breathe through his nose so they don’t have to come up for air if they don’t want to, the exact amount of space he needs to leave so that his glasses don’t bump Dedue in the nose, the correct angle to slot their lips together to earn that rumbling little chuckle and a smile against his mouth.

“Hey,” he says as they break apart, heart glowing like an ember in his chest. It’s a feeling that he’s come to know well. It is not one that he thinks he will ever learn to take for granted. “I want to try something.”

Dedue presses a kiss to his forehead. “Oh?” he says, inquisitive, almost suspiciously mild.

Ashe laughs. “Nothing like that,” he assures him, pretending for Dedue’s sake that he doesn’t notice the faint flicker of disappointment that crosses his otherwise solemn face. “Well. Maybe something like that! But I want to do something else, first.”

“I am yours,” Dedue repeats, lifting Ashe’s hand into the space between them so that he can fit a kiss to his knuckles. It is an expression of permission. Ashe beams.

“Shirt off, please,” he says.

Dedue raises an eyebrow. “I thought we were not—”

“Wait, that's not what I—”

Ashe is halfway through putting on a _ spectacular _ pout before he catches the playful spark in Dedue’s eyes. “Mean,” he informs him with a huff, poking him dead in the space between his eyebrows.

Dedue laughs.

“Please, continue,” he says. “I will not interrupt anymore, I promise.”

Ashe leans back to give Dedue some space as he peels off his sleep shirt and drops it in a little heap on the ground next to his side of the bed. The sight that greets him is familiar, all faded scars and warm brown skin, muscles a little less pronounced than they once were. There is no need to get up before dawn to train now, after all. No more long and grueling marches, no more battlefields to swing axes and stain the ground red—nothing but peacetime and paperwork and the occasional bureaucratic scuffle at the king’s behest.

Knight’s tales always end once the battle is over, Ashe knows. The maiden is saved, the evil is defeated, the hero rides off into a perfect sunset. Nobody ever writes about what comes after. He figures that nobody really wants to read about coming home from war, the struggles of piecing a broken continent back together, the pride and proof of a body that has finally earned the right to softened edges.

It’s a shame, he thinks. He still loves a good chivalric tale, but he loves the bit of soft pudge over his husband’s belly even more.

Ashe starts slow, leaning up in Dedue’s lap. Dedue takes the hint, dipping his head low so that Ashe can reach his forehead. He drops one kiss onto his hairline first, gentle but firm—then another—and another, and another, up and down the lines of the thin scars that litter his face.

“Hey, do you remember that haircut that you had at the academy?” he says between kisses, watching Dedue’s bemused face in the moments that he pulls away.

“I do,” Dedue says, realization dawning in his eyes, his cheeks stretching in a smile as Ashe moves to kiss his way across them. Ashe lingers at the long scar that runs down the length of his left cheek. “Almost as well as I remember having this conversation last month. Did you truly think it was that bad?”

Ashe considers. “Not at the time,” he says thoughtfully, truthfully, with a brief peck at Dedue’s lips before he crosses to the other side of his face. He skims his mouth across the deep, shiny scar above his right eyebrow, tugging lightly at the long ponytail bundled at the back of his head. “Not until you returned during the war, at least. I couldn’t believe you’d been keeping this from us.”

Ashe kisses down the line of Dedue’s cheekbone. He hesitates for a brief moment before pressing onwards.

“You know—after you came back, I wondered about these scars for the longest time,” he says more quietly, pulling back so that their noses are just barely touching. Ashe runs his fingertips across the furrow that splits Dedue’s chin. “Before I was brave enough to ask you about them. I was… angry, probably. That someone had done this to you, and that I hadn’t been there to help.”

Dedue blinks. “Ashe,” he says. “It was never your fault. Everything that led to this was my choice.”

“I know,” Ashe says. He puts on a smile, warm and small. “I know. And you’d do it again, wouldn’t you?”

A younger Ashe might have meant it differently—a little more bitter, a little more bite. A younger Ashe might have been furious with Dedue, so blatantly willing to toss his life away for someone else’s sake. But they are older now, and just wise enough to know that they know nothing at all, and Ashe has found enough new perspective, in time, to forgive him.

“The point is, I never thought you looked scary,” Ashe says, scratching his fingers through the close crop of Dedue’s hair at the side of his head. “Scars, no scars. You’re beautiful to me.”

Dedue is looking at him now, really _looking,_ and it's less shock than awe that colors his smile. When Ashe leans in to kiss the corner of his mouth, Dedue turns his face just enough to catch him full on the lips.

After a few minutes, Ashe taps gently at Dedue’s chest. Dedue lets him go, albeit a little reluctantly.

“Let me show you,” Ashe says, and brings Dedue’s hand up to his face.

He lets Dedue cup his cheek for a moment before he turns his head, mapping out all of the scars across his palm with his lips. Ashe makes his intent clear very quickly. He moves from Dedue’s hand to the inside of his forearm to the curve of his bicep, pressing tiny kisses to the scars and soft planes of his arms, gifting love to every inch of his skin. As he does, Ashe murmurs faint words of praise, making sure that no part of him goes unattended.

For a while, it’s quiet. Ashe takes his time. He purposefully keeps each touch chaste, though as the minutes drag on, he can feel Dedue start to shiver a little more every time Ashe lets his breath ghost across his neck.

This, too, is easier now, the dialogue between their bodies a language that Ashe has become all but fluent in. So he knows, when he feels Dedue stiffen at the brush of his lips across his collarbone, that he is offering him patience. And he knows—when he grinds the slightest bit into Dedue’s lap, and earns a stir of interest for his efforts—that he won’t be too interested in keeping his hands off for very long.

Ashe grins, something bright and wicked. He leans in with one slow roll of his hips, pulling a long, stuttering exhale from Dedue’s lungs.

“Don’t touch,” he whispers against the shell of his ear. Dedue’s entire body shudders, but he stays put, hands at his sides. A familiar thrill curls low in Ashe’s gut; he kisses Dedue on the cheek. “Not until I say you can, alright?”

Dedue swallows once, thickly, and nods. Ashe takes this as his cue to leave a wet trail of open-mouthed kisses down his neck. He tastes like salt, like sweat. Ashe takes skin gleefully between his teeth, reveling in the choked-off noise that Dedue makes as he paints a new, gentle bruise there.

“Ashe,” Dedue pants. The lamplight flickers across the strong line of his jaw. Ashe can feel the insistent press of him through their thin sleep clothes.

“Yes, love?” Ashe holds his gaze steady as he rocks back into Dedue’s lap again, making him twitch.

“Please,” he says.

Ashe hums. “Please what?”

Dedue is doing his best to look unamused. “As if you don’t_ —ahh— _already know,” he accuses.

Ashe’s grin widens. “I have to make sure you understand,” he says, “that I love _ all _ the other parts of you, first.”

Dedue is not really the kind of person who voices most of his thoughts out loud, but Ashe knows him very well, and the impatient buck of his hips against Ashe’s ass speaks volumes anyway.

In response, Ashe ducks his head and bites another kiss at the base of Dedue’s neck, right next to the first one. Dedue whimpers, breath catching in his throat. Ashe resists the urge to lay him out on the bed right then and there.

“I really love it when you do that,” he murmurs, full of wonder, flicking one of Dedue’s nipples with his left hand while petting at the back of his head with his right. “You make the best sounds. Let me hear you?”

Dedue has never been one to refuse Ashe’s requests.

Ashe kisses and licks his way down the lines of Dedue’s stomach, the hard-won softness of his belly, the trail of pale hair that disappears into his waistband. He hovers at his hip for a moment, pushing one thumb into the crease of his hipbone. Dedue’s hips jerk up in near-automatic response, seeking friction but finding none.

“Off?” he asks. Dedue barely bothers nodding before he all but kicks his pants off himself, smallclothes and all.

“Off,” he confirms a beat later, meeting Ashe’s amused eyes.

Ashe settles himself between Dedue’s legs, now bare, bracketing him on either side. He takes a minute to admire them, leaning in to trail his tongue across the lightning stripes at the insides of his thighs. Dedue lets out a breathless laugh. Behind him, Ashe can hear his toes curl and uncurl against the sheets.

“Did that tickle?” he asks, looking up from where he’s worrying at Dedue’s solid thigh with the barest hint of teeth.

“Just a bit,” Dedue says with a terrible, radiant smile.

Still, if the sight of Dedue resting half-hard and untouched against his own stomach is any indication, Ashe is doing pretty well for himself—

Oh, he has an idea.

“Can I…?” Ashe starts, reaching for the drawer where they keep the oil—but Dedue is already nodding, opening the drawer himself and handing Ashe the vial without another word. Ashe leans in to kiss him before he takes it. “Thank you, love.”

He takes a second while he’s near the headboard to grab the pillow that they’re not using; Dedue lifts his hips obligingly, letting Ashe use the pillow to prop him up into a better position. Ashe pushes Dedue’s knees up towards his chest and just a little bit further open before he starts pressing more feather-light kisses to his knee, his inner thigh, the space between his legs. Just inches away, Dedue’s cock twitches. Ashe pointedly does not reach up to touch, and they have played this game enough by now for Dedue to know that he is not allowed to touch himself.

“How are you?” Ashe asks, about half a second before he makes direct eye contact and drags his tongue against the edge of Dedue’s hole.

“Fuck,” says Dedue.

Ashe laughs, nosing at his husband’s balls with something halfway between mischief and reverence. “We’ll get to that,” he says encouragingly.

Dedue lets his head sink back with a groan. Ashe thinks he is about to complain, or say something snarky in response. Not enough people know this about Dedue, he feels.

“I love you,” Dedue says instead.

There’s a warm little thing that lives in Ashe’s heart, these days. Every once in a while, Dedue will say or do something that makes it burst into full bloom.

It’s been there since the day they got married—no, before that, probably. Since they started dating. Since their first kiss. Since the first time he said—

“I love you too,” Ashe says, quiet and full of light. “I really, really do.”

He moves to take off the reading glasses, but Dedue stops him with a light tap to the elbow. “Leave them on,” he says. “They look good.”

Ashe wrinkles his nose. “They’ll just bump into you,” he says. “Not very sexy.”

Dedue looks so fantastically sad about this that Ashe immediately backtracks. “Fine,” he relents, holding Dedue’s gaze for only a second longer before he spreads his cheeks with his hands and presses his tongue flat against his rim.

The response is immediate. He all but spasms under the touch, fists still dutifully clenched against the sheets instead of in Ashe’s hair. Dedue is very good. Dedue always listens. Ashe tells him so.

He teases around him with his tongue, suddenly and acutely aware of the fact that Dedue is naked and squirming against his mouth while Ashe is still completely clothed.

“You’re doing so well, love,” he says, peering up to watch Dedue’s face as he gasps at each new sensation. “So good, just for me,” he continues before he sits up and wipes his chin and reaches for the vial of oil behind him.

Dedue’s eyes track the oil as it moves, track his fingers as he pops the cork from the vial. “Only for you,” he says, his voice low, already a little rough at the edges. It sucks all of the air out of the room in an instant. Ashe is painfully conscious of the glass container in his hands, the unbearable press of his own cock trapped against his skin.

He takes a second to properly coat his fingers—this is also something they’ve learned through years of practice, enough to make the process enjoyable but not so much that they have to set aside new oil every three days—before he sets his first finger gently against Dedue’s entrance. He presses at the muscle there, eyes widening as he realizes—the first joint of his finger slips inside without very much resistance at all.

“Hey, wait, did you…?” he says dumbly, staring at his own finger knuckle-deep in his husband’s ass, where it has probably been hundreds of times at this point in their lives.

Dedue laughs, a shaky but self-satisfied thing. “Yes,” he admits.

_ “When?” _ Ashe demands, more impressed than anything, even as he presses further. Dedue’s expression doesn’t change, but his fists tighten once more in the blankets, a fact that bypasses Ashe’s brain and goes straight to his dick.

“E-earlier.” Dedue trips over the word as Ashe experimentally crooks his finger. “When you were closing up downstairs. I wanted to surprise you when you came to bed, b-but it seems we ended up here before I could even begin.”

Ashe’s first finger is already moving smoothly, slick and easy from the oil and Dedue’s earlier attentions. He easily adds a second and finds himself rewarded by the way Dedue’s head tips back, hips rocking back against his hand just a little bit, chasing that relentless pressure. “I never would have guessed,” Ashe says, pressing up with the pads of his fingers and watching the way Dedue squirms.

Dedue lets out another laugh that turns into something more like a moan as Ashe scissors inside him.

“I did not_ —hah— _mean to deceive you,” Dedue says, unable to keep his voice fully together under Ashe’s touch. This is the part of the game that Ashe loves, getting to take Dedue’s steady composure apart piece by piece, basking in the feeling of being the only person in the world who’s ever seen him like this, teasing at his walls until he’s flushed and begging.

“I’m glad you did,” Ashe tells him, holding up three fingers and waiting for Dedue to give him a nod before he adds another alongside the first two. A deep groan rumbles somewhere in Dedue’s chest as Ashe lets him get used to the new stretch. “We should do this more often.”

“Do you think so?” Dedue starts to say, but then Ashe crooks his fingers _ just _ right, and it dissolves into a strangled cry—

Ashe smiles and stills, pulling his hand from Dedue’s ass entirely.

Dedue whimpers at the sudden loss of his fingers, hole clenching uselessly around the empty space. Ashe crawls up the bed to hover over Dedue’s body, his clothed cock brushing against Dedue’s own, and leans down to kiss him, bruising and keen. It’s eager, a little greedy. It burns bright with a hunger that Ashe knows Dedue keeps under firm lock and key.

“What do you need?” Ashe says, pulling away. Below him, Dedue is a sight to behold, all glassy eyes and kiss-bitten lips, a thin ring of sea-green swallowed by his blown pupils. He seems hazy, blissfully unfocused.

Good, but not right now. “Dedue,” Ashe calls softly, lifting a hand to cup his cheek.

This gets his attention, snapping the clarity back into his gaze. “Tell me what you want, love.”

Dedue sucks in a hiss of a breath as Ashe lets himself brush up against the length of his naked shaft again. “I want to touch you,” he says, without fanfare.

Ashe smiles serenely. “Not yet,” he replies. “But you’ve been so patient. Isn’t there anything else I can give you?”

Dedue considers.

“Then I would like you to take off your clothes,” he says, “because this is starting to feel unfair.”

Ashe laughs, shucking off his shirt before Dedue even finishes the sentence. “Fair enough,” he concedes. He peels his pants off one leg at a time and flings them off the bed. He never wants to see them again.

There’s a clear shift in the air as he pulls his waistband down, finally letting his dick spring free. Dedue goes quiet and attentive and hungry and still.

“Anything else?” he asks.

“Yes. I would like you to come here,” Dedue breathes, leaning up towards Ashe but obediently leaving his hands where they are, “and then I would like you to come closer.”

There was a time, once, when this would have been an impossible thing for Dedue to say. There’s only the barest hint of a blush on his cheeks as he says it now, steady and true and full of so much trust.

Ashe reaches for the vial of oil again, uncorking it with one hand and slicking a generous amount over himself. He makes a show of it, pumping himself slowly from base to head, watching fondly as Dedue’s eyes are drawn straight to him. He does not seem to be aware of the fact that he is licking his lips. Ashe is hopelessly in love.

“Closer,” Ashe repeats thoughtfully. He recorks the vial and places it gently back in its drawer before wiping the excess oil off on the outside of his thigh. Ashe moves back up so that his hands are propped on either side of Dedue’s head, the head of his cock smearing precome and oil against his belly. He presses more kisses to each scar he meets on the way up, pausing every few seconds until they’re nose to nose. “Like this?”

Dedue shakes his head, just once. Ashe doesn’t miss the way that he spreads his legs a little more. “Not quite,” he says.

Ashe hums. “How about this?” he says, leaning back so he can line himself up with Dedue’s entrance, nudging at his ass with the very tip of his cock. “Is this better?”

Dedue is very noticeably trying to keep himself from rocking his hips against the pressure at his hole. “Better,” he says. “Though I still think—”

Dedue cries out as Ashe slowly pushes in, shifting inexorably forwards until he’s nearly bent in half against the headboard.

Ashe lets him settle for a moment, feeling the clench of muscle as Dedue gets used to him there, the tight familiar heat. His lips part, but no sound comes out. Dedue takes deep breaths in through his nose and out through his mouth, and Ashe peppers kisses to his nose, his cheeks, his closed eyelids all the while.

“Close enough?” he whispers, his smile widening as Dedue nods his head.

Ashe shifts his hips just slightly. Dedue lets out a noise halfway between a whine and a sigh, a breathy little thing. It’s terribly cute. Ashe runs his fingertips over the scar on his cheek again, as careful and delicate as if he were a soap bubble about to shatter.

“You’re beautiful,” Ashe says softly.

Ashe begins to move, then—shallow, languid thrusts that have Dedue rolling his hips up to meet him. “You’re beautiful when I get to wake up to you in the morning, even when your hair is a mess,” he says, punctuating it with a kiss to one of the ragged scars on Dedue’s collarbone. Ashe fucks him slowly, softly, enjoying the way he goes pliant and sweet beneath him. “And you’re beautiful when you’re the last thing I see before I fall asleep.” He kisses the scar on his chin and snaps his hips a little deeper, making Dedue cry out once more.

Ashe speeds up a little, holding Dedue’s thighs open as he begins to fuck into him in earnest. “You’re beautiful when you’re covered in dirt in the garden.” A thrust, a kiss to the corner of his lip, a whimper. “And you’re—_ahh_—you’re beautiful when we’re together in the kitchen, and when you’re wiping down tables, and when you’re in our bed—taking me—so—”

_ “Ngh— _Ashe—”

Ashe hits the right spot then, and he knows it, because Dedue’s voice breaks into something that sounds a little bit like a sob. He doesn’t relent. If anything, he picks up the pace, slamming his hips into Dedue’s until he can make out tears forming at the corners of his eyes.

“You were beautiful on the bridge, the day you came back during the war,” he says, leaning forwards so that their lips brush with every spare movement. He punctuates every new sentence with another kiss. “You were beautiful before then, and you were beautiful every day after, too. You’re beautiful even when you can’t see it. You’re beautiful even when you think you’re not.”

“Ashe, please,” Dedue says, and it sounds an awful lot like begging. “Let me—”

“You can,” he says, and he’s barely finished speaking before Dedue’s hands are everywhere they can reach, broad palms roaming across the curve of his ass, the arch of his back. One of them winds into his hair and tugs. Ashe makes a strangled noise, his hips stuttering in their rhythm as Dedue leans forwards to suck at the pale skin of his neck, the scrape of his teeth and heat of his tongue and the feeling of him around Ashe’s dick.

“Shit,” Ashe pants, slamming back into Dedue without restraint, now. Dedue meets him thrust for thrust, the two of them moving to an achingly familiar beat. The wet slap of skin on skin resounds through the room, coupled with the very conspicuous sound of their voices over the even _ more _ conspicuous sounds of the bed creaking in protest.

Ashe is grateful, not for the first time, that they don’t have neighbors downstairs.

“Don’t stop,” Dedue says, his hands scrabbling at Ashe’s ass to pull him in deeper. Ashe can feel the telltale bite of nails digging into his skin, little hot pricks of pain that translate into pleasure somewhere on the way up. “I love you—_fuck_—please don’t stop.”

“I love you,” Ashe repeats, starting to lose his rhythm in the sharp haze of pleasure, the heat coiling in his gut. "Dedue—I—"

He rests his head in the crook of Dedue’s neck and takes him in hand, the weight of him heavy and smooth in his palm, and then lets go of himself, hips stuttering, smearing precome over the head of Dedue’s cock as he—

The second thing Ashe notices when he becomes capable of observing the world around him again is Dedue, looking beautiful and well-fucked and uncharacteristically sheepish. He is sweaty and beautiful, holding Ashe’s face with gentle hands, not moving an inch even as Ashe’s dick softens inside of him. He is saying something, but Ashe’s ears are ringing so hard that he’s not totally sure he could hear it if he tried.

The first thing Ashe notices is that there is a thick stripe of white over the right lens of his reading glasses.

“...’m sorry,” Dedue is saying, wiping his own spend from Ashe’s glasses and cheek with the pad of his thumb. Ashe catches his hand dumbly before he can wipe it away on his discarded smalls and brings Dedue’s fingers to his lips. It's salty, not too bitter. Dedue’s eyes widen for just a second before they go warmly, incredibly fond.

“It’s alright,” Ashe says, suddenly aware of exactly how exhausted he is. He pulls out, making a face at the pale dribble that follows him. “It’s not the biggest mess we’ve ever made.”

Dedue chuckles, his voice hoarse. “No, I suppose not,” he says.

“You did well,” Ashe says. Dedue seems to glow with the praise.

“As did you,” he says.

They lay there in silence for a few more moments of post-coital bliss, Ashe playing idly with Dedue’s hair, Dedue tracing patterns on the freckled skin of Ashe’s back. Then:

“Do you really think I’m—beautiful?”

Ashe props himself up on his elbows.

“I do,” he says. “I’ll do that—or whatever it takes—as many times as it takes to prove it.”

Dedue smiles, a wry and enamored thing. “You do not have to prove it,” he says. “But if you wanted to do that again, I suppose I would not complain.”

Ashe snorts. He rolls his eyes and moves to fetch the washbasin, but Dedue tugs at his arm before he can fully stand, pulling him in firmly against his chest.

“Dedue,” Ashe protests, the smell of sweat and sex cooling in the air between them. “We should really clean up—”

“Just a minute?” Dedue asks hopefully, vulnerable in a way that he only ever is with him, pushing Ashe’s hair back from his face.

Ashe is the biggest sucker in all of Fodlan.

“Fine,” he agrees, snuggling up under Dedue’s chin. “Just for a little while.”

**Author's Note:**

> who knew that baby's first explicit was gonna turn into this 5.5k atrocity


End file.
